


endless, numbered days

by glim



Series: AU-gust 2020 fics [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Childhood Friends, Grief, M/M, Romance, Soulmates, they save each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25701850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: "D'you know what soulmate means?"Steve's forehead wrinkles into that little crease, then his foot knocks against Bucky's. "It means you live together."
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: AU-gust 2020 fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860670
Comments: 23
Kudos: 133
Collections: AUgust 2020





	endless, numbered days

**Author's Note:**

> Written for AU-gust 2020 Prompt #3 - Soulmate AU.

_i._

When the school day comes to a close and Steve isn't waiting for Bucky outside, Bucky knows exactly where to look for him. He always knows, even if his Ma or the teacher tries to tell him otherwise. He's known since Steve was really, really little and learned how to walk and used to like to sit behind the sofa to wait for his own mama to come pick him up from Bucky's apartment after work. 

He's known since Steve got really, really sick when he was three years old and Bucky's Ma let him go sit with Steve, tell him a story and hold his hand. He's known, since then, that he'll always be able to find Steve, and that he won't let Steve go until he's ready to let go himself. 

This afternoon, Bucky knows Steve is out by the old playground, the one down the block from the school. He expects to find Steve in some scrape with the Finnigan boys, like when they found some kid even smaller than Steve to pick on. 

Instead, Bucky finds him sitting on one of the old swings, feet scuffing up little dusty clouds in the dirt. His hair is dark-gold-blond in the afternoon sun and the frown line between his eyebrows disappears when he hears Bucky walking up to the swings. 

"You didn't wait for me," Bucky says, but he can't find any space inside him to be angry with Steve. 

"But you found me anyway." Steve smiles when Bucky sighs. He's got two missing teeth in the front and his tongue pokes through the space, like he's just realizing all over again it's there. 

"Yeah, 'course I did. What're you doing out here, anyway? Scuffing up your shoes so your Ma yells at you again?" 

"My Ma doesn't yell at me," Steve says, though he stops kicking up the dirt. 

"Sure, okay, you're right, Stevie." 

Steve _is_ right, though, Sarah doesn't yell at them, she just looks at them until they both know what they did wrong. Steve still looks a little guilty, though, so Bucky drops down onto the swing next to him and kicks his foot against Steve. Steve retaliates, then gives Bucky another of his stupid, toothless smiles. 

"Hey," he says, and digs into the pocket of his jacket. He comes up with two pieces of penny candy and holds his palm out to Bucky. "One's for you." 

"Really?" 

"One is always for you, Buck." Steve lets Bucky pick the red one, like he always does, and pops the lemon one into his mouth. "Spelled all the words right in class today," he explains around the candy. 

Bucky feels a burst of pride in his chest, mostly just because it's Steve, but also because Steve misses at least half the days he's supposed to be in school. He hasn't had too many bad days yet, but once winter comes, he'll be coughing too much to go to school when he gets sick. 

Today, though, the afternoon is all sunshine and penny candy and Steve's proud smile. Bucky lets warmth burst through his chest as the cherry-red sweet sugary taste of the penny candy bursts over his tongue. 

"Hey, Stevie," he says. He kicks his foot against Steve's after they've spent a few quiet minutes sucking on candy and scuffing up the dirt again. Something tugs in Bucky's chest when Steve turns to look at him. "D'you know what soulmate means?" 

Steve's forehead wrinkles into that little crease, then his foot knocks against Bucky's. "It means you live together." 

"Yeah. Yeah, that's right," Bucky says, thinking about how his apartment is just down the hall from Steve's and how he can't imagine any of his days not starting or ending with Steve. 

_ii._

"You don't have to do this, Buck." Steve wipes his hands on his trousers and lets out a huff of a sigh. He should probably sit down for a few minutes, but there are only a couple more boxes to get rid of and he wants the job done. 

Bucky stacks the remaining two boxes together and gives Steve a smile over the edge after hoisting both into his arms. "I know, I don't mind. I'll be right back, okay?" 

"You know that's not what I meant," Steve calls down the stairs, but Bucky's already gone and Steve's tired of having this conversation anyway. 

At least all his mom's extra things are out of the apartment, he thinks, then realizes, _all his mom's extra things are out of the apartment_. Steve scrubs both hands over his face and pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. He kept the few books and pieces of jewelry she had, her Bible and rosary, and the shoebox of letters and pictures of her family back home. He'd meant to do this weeks ago, but he got so sick a couple weeks after the funeral, sick enough that Bucky started coming to Steve's apartment after work instead of his own family's, and spending the night. 

He's spent every night with Steve for the past three weeks, body curled up around Steve's at night, his face tucked into the back of Steve's shoulder and his arm around Steve's waist. The first night, he'd kissed the back of Steve's neck and told Steve to get some rest, that everything would be all right because Bucky was going to hold on to him as long as he could. 

Before sadness can catch in Steve's throat, Bucky's footsteps bound back up the stairs. Steve does quick work to try and get the hot, itchy sting of tears out of his eyes, but he must not do a very good job. Bucky's eyes go soft when he comes into the kitchen and his arms go right around Steve's waist. 

"Hey... hey, it's all right, we'll save up and buy boxes and boxes of more stuff," Bucky murmurs. He draws Steve into his chest and tucks Steve's head right under his chin. "Pencils and paintbrushes and that set of books we've both been looking at..." 

When Steve closes his eyes and pushes his face into Bucky's chest, all he feels is warm. The warmth of Bucky's arms around him and the steady warm beat of his heart against Steve's heart. He realizes, too, in that moment, that he's finished crying, and that he wants boxes of art supplies and books and everything with Bucky. 

"You don't have to stay," Steve says, once more, just to be sure. He can't imagine waking up without Bucky's arms around him, without the promise of that magnetic pull between them, the promise they made over penny candies and playground dirt. 

Bucky goes quiet, kisses the top of Steve's head, holds him tighter. "It means you live together," Bucky murmurs into his hair. 

_iii._

By the time the Valkyrie sinks into the ice and snow, the pull in Steve's chest is faint and thready. For the first few hours after the train, it had thrummed painful and bright around Steve's heart, and all he could feel was Bucky. Anger and sadness and a brutal sense of how unfair the world is, and at the heart of that all: Bucky, and the soulbond that had drawn them together more than twenty years ago. 

"He's still alive," he'd said to Peggy as they sat in that bombed-out bar, the dust settling at their feet and scuffing up tiny clouds when they moved. "I can tell, I'll always be able to tell." 

Steve had had no words after that to explain; only one word had ever mattered, and he'd ever uttered it in front of anyone but Bucky himself. They'd kept it close between their mouths when they kissed at night, when they wrapped themselves around each other in their bed at home, in their tent in the Army camp. That one word that was supposed to mean that Steve would bring Bucky home and they'd go back and start and end their life together. 

"You think that house is still for sale? The one with the wraparound porch that you liked?" Steve asks. He doesn't feel cold anymore and that faint, thready pull in his chest is getting warmer. "That would be a good house. I bet you'll be able to fix that house up really nice for the two of us." 

When Steve lies down, he's not thinking about the war or plane or the shield he pulls over his chest. He's thinking about his mother's rosary and the way sunlight spills through their kitchen window; he's thinking about the grass in Central Park and the taste of lemon sweet-and-sour penny candy; he's thinking about the jar of paintbrushes on the bedroom windowsill and the stack of dime store novels by the bed; he's thinking about Bucky, always Bucky, his soft blue eyes and his smile and his arms around Steve as they fall asleep. 

"It means you live together," Steve says into the quiet cold and closes his eyes. 

He knows this, too, as well as he knows anything: soulmate means you die together, and here in the freezing water and silent snow, Steve knows when he closes his eyes and drifts off, Bucky will finally be able to do the same. 

_iv._

Two days after the battle of New York, Steve puts his fist through a punching bag. He's been trying to punch out the emptiness in his chest, and he's been trying to punch his way out of the fullness that replaces it only seconds later. He doesn't know which his worse: the hollow sadness or the welling loneliness. 

Wrapped around both is a frail, familiar thread. 

"Bucky's still alive," he says, two days after that, standing in the doorway to Tony Stark's workshop. He doesn't know where else to go; he doesn't have anywhere else to go. "He's still alive because I'm still alive." 

"Who the hell is Bucky?" Tony asks without looking up, then suddenly goes still. When his eyes meet Steve's, tacit understanding and unexpected sadness fills them. "Oh my god," he says, and walks over to Steve. 

They stare at each other for a few minutes and Steve thinks he might punch something again, but the thread tugs on his heart just as Tony lays his hand over the arc reactor in his chest. 

"You know what this means?" He asks and taps the blue light. 

Steve presses his lips together to stop himself from saying what he wants to say. "It keeps you alive," he says, realizing it means the same thing. 

"Yeah, sure, but... here, right here, over my heart, too bright to miss: Rhodey, and Pepper. Every second, I know they're all right because I look like the personification of a night-light." Tony pauses and looks down at his palm, at the light that seeps from between his fingers. 

Steve swallows back the welling sensation in his throat. His chest hurts, worse than any asthma attack he can remember, to think what his seventy years in the ice could have meant for Bucky. Flickering cold and dreams of drowning, he fears. 

"I'm so sorry," Tony says. "Howard looked for him, and Aunt Peg. They looked for you both, their paperwork has to be around somewhere." 

"SHIELD," Steve says, surprised he can speak. 

"Oh, well, that's easy then. I can hack into SHIELD on my coffee break. We'll find him, Cap. Or he'll find you, you know this soulmate business works. I can never hide." Tony smiles, but that inimitable sad understanding is there, too, when he rests a hand on Steve's arm. 

The welling in Steve's chest isn't loneliness this time, but a strange sense of having found the faintest shred of hope, the thinnest filament of faith that Tony might be right. 

They wade through files and folders, through old dusty papers and through de-encrypted documents, over coffee and swapped stories that make the hours of reading more bearable. 

Six months pass before they make progress, and another six months before their leads get them anywhere. Steve's already packed to fly down to DC tomorrow with Tony when he hears footsteps bound up the stairs to his apartment. 

He opens the door before he has a chance to think about what he should do. It could be anyone, it could be a trap. But no trap, no trick could make his heart beat this way, no fine, bright twisting ribbon of happiness could curl through his chest for anyone else. 

"You don't have to stay," Steve says. 

Bucky's eyes are the same soft ice blue when he looks at Steve and his arms feel the same when he pulls Steve in close and tucks Steve's head in against his shoulder. When Steve's eyes well up and hot tears spill over onto Bucky's jacket, Bucky kisses his hair. 

_v._

When they pull Steve out of the ice, Bucky knows. 

He knows everything in one bright flash of memory, too painful and sharp to process at once. He remembers the ice and the fall, the Army camp and cramped tenement, Central Park at midnight at the height of summer and the sour-sweet taste of penny candy on his tongue. He remembers Steve, the bright gold of his hair and the warmth of his skin and the gentle curve of his back against Bucky's chest. 

He knows Steve before he knows himself. 

Even now, years later, there are nights where Bucky lies down next to Steve and traces his fingertips over the rise of Steve's cheekbones, the bridge of his nose, the swell of his bottom lip, and thinks he still knows Steve better than he knows himself. 

He's memorized the plane of Steve's chest and the rise and fall of his breath, and re-memorized it all over again now that both of their bodies have changed. His left hand knows the angle of Steve's hip as well as his right, and there are moments, like these, where he's tracing aimless patterns over Steve's skin that Bucky thinks, perhaps, they haven't changed that much, not at the heart of it all. 

"What?" Steve asks. That little frown-line creases between his eyebrows and Bucky reaches up to trace that, too, then presses the pad of his thumb there until Steve stops frowning. 

"You brought me home," he murmurs and there is something wondrous in the way Steve's moves to press a silent kiss against the inside of Bucky's wrist. 

"Not the way I planned," Steve says against Bucky's wrist, "not any of the ways I planned." 

Bucky leans up to kiss away the frown on Steve's face. "Not all your plans work, Stevie." 

A soft laugh puffs warm against the side of Bucky's neck and Steve nestles himself in closer, close enough that he can push his face right into Bucky's shoulder and keep himself there as long as he likes. 

Which is fine by Bucky. Steve can curl himself right up and tuck himself into Bucky's chest and spend the rest of the night like that if that's what he wants. This is what Bucky's wanted, this is all Bucky's ever wanted: to live out the long, unwinding days of his life next to Steve, to sleep next to him and wake up next to him until the very last day and know that he's learned every meaning of the word soulmate.


End file.
